Tag Archives: Firefox

Want to watch a .wmv file in your browser? Need to know how your blog feels in Internet Explorer? Or what about those pesky ActiveX controls? Don’t worry, this post just may have solved all of your Firefox problems:

Continuing my series of “must needed Firefox add-ons,” today’s add-on is IE Tab, a powerful tool that allows users to open links in an embedded Internet Explorer tab right in Firefox. Yes, this means ActiveX controls as well as IE’s smooth scrolling will now be directly available on Firefox. You can even run a Windows Update via this add-on.

A simple Firefox add-on that gives a highly convenient and clutter-free method to quickly open websites that you need often. One keyboard hotkey makes the “Launcher” panel instantly appear, followed by a single key press to jump to the site you wish to open

Meaning instead of re-typing websites like Google, Youtube, Gmail, or Twitter, you can simply create a keyboard shortcut to that URL (ALT + Shift + the shortcut’s assigned letter is default). You can also assign a hotkey (CTRL + Space Bar is default) to open a menu that appears over your browser. To the right is a screenshot of SiteLauncher in action.

To celebrate Firefox’s one billion download landmark, I’m going to write a series of posts for the next week dealing with “must needed” Firefox add-ons. Being a FF user who never really explored too many FF add-ons, the add-ons I post I will actually start using on a day-to-day basis. Hopefully by the end of the week I can manage to make browsing the internet a much more enjoyable experience.

Today I came across a neat little Twitter add-on called Power Twitter. This add-on works inside the Twitter website. Some features include: link shrinking; inlines of Youtube, Google Maps, Flickr, and more; Facebook status updates; and photo uploading. As you can see from the screen shot of Power Twitter in action at the right, each individual tweet is much more engaging and informative to the end user. You can check out all the features and download the add-on at Power Twitter’s add-on page.

One drawback is that some Twitter pages may load slower than others because the add-on will retrieve information from links posted in each tweet. For me, the load times weren’t too bad, but I’m running on a 25mb down /3 mb up connection (and I just noticed that I’m even downloading torrents at the moment).

Stay tuned throughout the week for more add-ons that I’m going to be using.

This feat has somehow stayed under the radar for me as I’ve just caught wind of this today. Apparently a few days ago (the night of July 30th), Firefox hit one billion downloads. While obviously this doesn’t constitute as one billion users actively using the program, the Digital Daily explains it best:

As Mozilla CEO John Lilly told me this morning, “It’s a billion votes–a billion intentional decisions–for people to take control of how they interact with the Web. We–the whole Mozilla community, really–are really proud to have been part of building a product that’s been downloaded so many times, but more importantly, we’re all proud to have helped people take more control over their online lives by making intentional decisions.”